whitepaper: simplifying data center network management leveraging sdn - happiest minds

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© 2013 Happiest Minds Technologies Pvt. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Feb 2014, HAPPIEST MINDS TECHNOLOGIES

Simplifying Data Center Network Management Leveraging SDN

Author

Srinivas Jakkam Shivaji

March 2014, HAPPIEST MINDS TECHNOLOGIES

Simplifying Data Center Network Management Leveraging SDN

Author

Srinivas Jakkam Shivaji

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Copyright Information

This document is an exclusive property of Happiest Minds Technologies Pvt. Ltd. It is intended for

limited circulation.

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Table of Contents

Copyright Information ............................................................................................................................ 2

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 4

The Drivers for Simplifying Network Management ................................................................................ 5

Challenges Faced by Field Engineers towards Data Center Network Management - A Deep Dive ........ 6

SDN Overview ......................................................................................................................................... 8

Solution: Network Management Simplified ........................................................................................... 9

Implementation Overview .................................................................................................................... 13

Benefits ................................................................................................................................................. 14

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 15

References ............................................................................................................................................ 16

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Introduction

The traditional networks that have been built within the global enterprises over the years are inflexible,

very cumbersome to change, not easily scalable and need highly skilled and experienced network

architects and engineers to administer and manage its complexity.

External programming or automation is an issue with traditional networking devices due to their usage

of vendor dependent proprietary management system, protocols and lack of reliable APIs. The

networking industry has been slow to evolve due to the concept of “Black Boxes”; many enterprise

customers perceive it as the primary inhibitor to agility and innovation.

Enterprises are driving data center consolidation, maximizing ROI through robust technologies such as

server and storage virtualizations and private/hybrid cloud implementations, to support the agility

demands by the business. Enterprise Data Network, however has been a major impediment to agile

changes; therefore enthusiasm dampener for the business and IT. This has made networks in Datacenter

appear as “antiquated and error prone component.”

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the new norm for networks that enables network operators to

have programmatic control over the entire network from a single logical/virtual point. SDN offers the

vision of real-time control of the behavior of parts or all of network by centralized software (Control

Plane) which was not possible in traditional networking approaches.

This whitepaper gives a brief overview of one of the critical use cases which Happiest Minds can

demonstrate as an innovative solution that enhances field engineer’s experience in

managing/configuring/debugging all levels of networks in datacenters leveraging Software Defined

Networking Technology (SDN).

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The Drivers for Simplifying Network Management

A typical Enterprise Data Center is an ever-changing system consisting of thousands of IT and

Infrastructure assets with very complex relationships between Data Center network elements often

spanning multiple data centers across locations and geographic boundaries. There are a wide range of

tools available for data center network management. Data center management remains to be

intimidating despite the deployment of tools such as asset management, real-time monitoring of

network element’s availability, Service chain provisioning and Workflow/Automation management.

With Internet of Things taking shape, where the number of things connected to internet would increase

exponentially and Cloud Computing making huge impact in a positive way, the enterprise Data Center

architecture and design is getting more complex. Data Centers need to handle explosive data growth,

very large volume of concurrent transactions at extreme responses, deep data analysis using complex

algorithms and ability to recover from failures and restore large volumes of data, in short period, in a

federated compute environment.

This necessarily means that it would require, besides highly efficient and improved planning, Data

Centers to be consolidated and managed for massive scale and very high performance.

Changes with minimal downtime must be made seamlessly to production business applications, the

network elements monitoring and management simplified, and maintenance process reliable.

THE COST OF GETTING IT WRONG

Average cost of data center downtime per minute $ 7,900

Average reported downtime 86 minutes

Average cost of incident $ 690,000

For a total data center outage, average recovery time is 119 minutes, costing approx. $ 901,500

For partial data center outage, average recovery time is 56 minutes, costing approx. $ 350,000

Ponemon Institute

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Traditional Enterprise Data Center Network management can be extremely challenging, requiring

painstaking analysis which is error prone, and potentially very expensive to business due to any network

downtime and inadvertent exposure to attacks. Often successful break-fixes, minor changes or

enhancements to network elements and most definitely all major upgrades and/or implementations

requires significant coordination between field engineers and remote network architects, managers or

administrators operating from global network management centers. The enterprise network

management process today is a serious impediment to the promise of agile application development

and continuous deployment even as the server and storage virtualization, and private/hybrid/public

cloud solutions have come of age.

The management/configuration/debugging procedures remain a daunting task in data centers mainly

because of multiple vendor-specific proprietary assets such as switches/routers requiring their own

proprietary procedures rather than simple and unified process. The data center network management

challenges as above have found answers in the latest technology advances such as Software Defined

Network (SDN) where the control panel is abstracted from the network devices. However, all these

future technology adoption will be possible only if and when the point of adoption is strong.

Challenges Faced by Field Engineers towards Data Center Network

Management - A Deep Dive

Challenging economic climate is driving businesses to reduce or at-best maintain flat budgets without

impacting performance. Meeting current market needs is impossible with traditional network

management approaches in data centers. However, data center consolidation to service oriented

architecture is enabling organizations, an opportunity to implement advanced network virtualization

technologies that are application aware, and management strategies that maximize network bandwidth

utilization and ensure superior application performance.

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Enterprise Network Management challenges are multi-fold and some of these are described below:

Lot of challenges are faced by Field Engineers to add or move any device in data centers, as they

have to touch upon multiple switches, routers etc. using vendor dependent device level

management tools.

For a simple network-wide policy to be implemented, Field Engineers (of Data Center) may have

to configure multiple devices and mechanisms. For example, every time a new Policy is to be

added, it can take hours/days, for field Engineers to reconfigure policies across the entire

network.

As capacity, performance and availability demands on the data center rapidly grow, so must the

network grow. This requires an efficient and better management of network in data centers.

The traditional network management tools used by Field Engineers are not designed to support

analysis and changes according to the growing business demands with service level expectations

in hours or days.

Enterprise datacenters would need to deploy new capabilities and services in response to

changing business needs and user demands. But, provisioning such new capabilities in

enterprise datacenters is hindered by vendors' equipment product cycles with respect to

Management Tools.

Ability of network operators/Field Engineers to tailor the network to their individual

environments is hindered due to lack of standard, open interfaces.

All these above described challenges act as negative catalysts that result in exponential increase of

Operational expenditures at Data Centers. The number of interfaces that requires human touch starting

from extensive planning and using unwieldy network diagrams make the whole process error prone. In

effect, traditional enterprise network management methods are increasingly proving expensive to the

business, both in terms of maintenance and ability to introduce changes to the network at speeds,

which can make business agile in the market place.

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SDN (Software Defined Networking) plays an integral role in transforming most of the network

management issues and is promising to be a key differentiator in bringing down the Operational

expenditure (OPEX), therefore needs serious consideration by Network Managers.

SDN Overview

Software Defined Networking is a new architecture that has been designed to enable more agile and

cost effective networks which enables simpler and innovative management approaches that introduces

consistency, reliability and performance into today’s complex Data Center’s environment. The Open

Networking Foundation (ONF) has defined an SDN architecture model as depicted below.

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Software Defined Networking (SDN), the emerging new network architecture primarily does two things:

(a) decouple network control functions from simple network forwarding functions and (b) make

networking functions programmable via APIs to applications. This migration of control, from individual

network devices, enables the underlying network to appear like a logical entity for applications and

network services.

Network intelligence that was distributed in traditional networking architecture is now logically

centralized in a controller that enables one to have an entire view of the network. With SDN, enterprise

data centers can now have vendor independent control over the entire network infrastructure from a

centralized logical point, which further simplifies the network operation and its management. Network

administrators/Field engineers can now through standard, open-interfaces (using automated

scripts/programs) debug/configure this simplified network abstraction, rather than feeding in thousands

of lines of configuration distributed among multiple devices.

Network managers get the flexibility to organize, manage, secure and improve network resources by

automated SDN programs. SDN enables field engineers to manage the entire network infrastructure at

Data centers through intelligent orchestration, and provisioning systems that can be built as business

applications at the Application layer of SDN architecture, custom tailored to meet business objectives.

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Solution: Network Management Simplified

Implementation:

The following illustrates the transformation by the SDN architecture on implementation of management

function developed by Happiest Minds.

1) QR (Quick Response) Code: QR Code would be present on each and every network element. Using

this, the field engineer would retrieve all the dynamic statistics information (such as Current traffic

at its ports, Flow tables, ACLs, etc.) pertaining to the scanned network element.

We could have various implementations of QR codes as shown above on each and every network

element in a data center.

2) Central Server: Helps in establishing and maintaining connection between itself and SDN Controllers

present at the Datacenter. It also helps in establishing connection between itself and the App

running on a tablet/phone. It forms a bridge between the Response and the Query between App

and SDN Controllers.

3) Android app: Runs on a tablet/phone, and enables the field engineer to perform required operations on the network element in an Enterprise Datacenter.

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Architecture

Central Server

App(s) [Android / iOS / Windows etc….]

Central Server

OpenFlow Controllers [Floodlight / POX / Ryu / OpenDaylight etc…]

North Plugin(s)

South Plugin(s)

Controller

Management High Availability Database AAA Connector

OpenFlow Switches Open VSwitches Hybrid Switches

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Brief Overview of Central Server

North Plugin(s): This component provides compatibility and acts as a translator between various

Platform Apps (such as Windows, Android, iOS etc.), to communicate with the central server.

Controller Management: This Module is mainly responsible for acquiring and storing all the information

about a controller such as its IPv4 address, so that the controller can get attached to the central server.

High Availability: As we know the outside world is very uncertain, this module helps in having

Distributed Server approach. When a server is down due to uncertain events, then this module can

automatically sense this state and transfer all the fragile information (such as the table information) and

its contents to a Standby server, which would automatically take over the work.

Database: This module is liable or causative for updating the basic Network Element Information (such

as MAC Address) at the central server.

AAA Connector (Authentication Module): This module authenticates each and every valid Controller

registrations. The network administrator can also determine which of the controllers can gain access to

the server and which cannot.

South Plugin(s): As we know there are many types of SDN Controllers available that are unique in their

own ways in terms of Programming language that was used to build them (or) Policies/Standards that

were used to build them. So south plugin(s) provide a medium through which various SDN controllers

could communicate with the central server.

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Implementation Overview

Central Server

App

SDN Controller

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2

4 3

5

Datacenter Network Infrastructure

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1. Field Engineer scans the QR Code present on the network element (Switch/Router) and the MAC

address is sent to the Central Server.

2. The Hash Table maintained by the Central Server is scanned for the IP address of the SDN

Controller, with received MAC address.

3. Central Server establishes connection with the retrieved IP address of the Controller and sends

the Query received from the App to the SDN Controller.

4. SDN Controller searches for the network element information maintained by it and send back

the queried result to the Controller.

5. The Central Server sends the result to the App and the App displays all the Queried information

on the screen.

Using the retrieved information, Field engineer can either decide to debug (or) configure the network

element from the App itself.

Benefits

The solution has been designed to cater to future needs of Data Centers, arising out of Data Center

consolidations and transformation to hybrid or completely Software Defined Data Centers (SDDC). In

such scenario, the Network Management such as configuring/monitoring/debugging its assets must

also transform.

Centralized Management and networking control devices from multiple vendors with a single

application, increases the productivity of a Field Engineer during downtime by just relying on single

Management Application rather than Multi-Vendor specific Management tools, which directly

translates to Datacenter Agility.

Rapid Innovation has the ability to deliver new network capabilities and services, without the need

to configure individual devices or wait for vendor releases that enables one to design their

datacenter networks, according to their business needs, thus having an Competitive edge.

More granular network control with the capability to apply comprehensive and wide-ranging

policies, at the device level enables to introduce new services in matter of minutes compared to

hours/days using traditional approaches.

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Eliminates the need to individually configure network devices each time an end point, application or

service is added or moved, or a policy changes, which reduces error prone environments at data

centers caused due to configuration or policy inconsistencies.

Because SDN controllers provide comprehensive visibility and control over the network, it could be

ensured that access control, quality of service, security and other policies are enforced consistently

across the network infrastructure of enterprise data centers.

With Happiest Minds Datacenter network management solution, enterprises and carriers benefit

from reduced operational costs, more dynamic configuration abilities, less errors and consistent

configuration and policy implementation.

Conclusion

The main aim of this solution is to have a Unified Debugging/Configuring/Monitoring tool, rather than

having individual vendor specific Configuring/Debugging procedures for each and every different vendor

specific switches, in a Datacenter with the help of SDN Technology. It also eliminates the use of CAT

cable techniques and has an entire Network Infrastructure Intelligence in a Tablet/phone, through which

Debugging/Configuration/Monitoring can be done on the fly. This solution along with SDN enables Field

Engineer to install the Flows (Flow tables) in the switches on the fly from any device, thus transforming

the network from “STATIC” networks to “DYNAMIC” networks. SDN technology enables “Traditional

Data Center” to be transformed to “Software Defined Data Center, where everything is determined in

terms of software rather than relying on CLI’s and Closed Proprietary Technologies, Tools and Devices.

So, are we ready to cater to the needs of future applications that utilize Data Centers, such as Internet of

Things (IoT), Cloud, Big Data, M2M, Intelligent and smart Devices, Software Defined Data Centers

(SDDC), Intelligent Networking Infrastructures etc?

http://www.happiestminds.com/big-data/

http://www.happiestminds.com/m2m/

http://www.happiestminds.com/Insights/internet-of-things/

http://www.happiestminds.com/technology-focus/cloud-computing/

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References

Causes of downtime study – Emerson Network Power

www.opennetworking.org

www.sdncentral.com

Software Defined Networks by Thomas D Nadeau & Ken Gray from O’REILLY

whitepaper: simplifying data center network management leveraging sdn - happiest minds

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